


That One Summer in Busan

by silkengloss



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band), Wanna One (Band)
Genre: Childhood, Childhood Friends, Childhood Memories, Male Friendship, Short One Shot, Summer, idk what other tags to put im so sleepy right now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-26
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-06-16 14:44:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15439374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silkengloss/pseuds/silkengloss
Summary: A short one-shot on how Woozi probably met Daniel all those years ago and forgot about him as the years went by.





	That One Summer in Busan

**Author's Note:**

> I'm just a girl in love with the friendship (Lee) Jihoon has with Daniel, so I wrote this on a whim. Enjoy! (unbeta-ed)

 

"You should go out and play while the weather’s nice.”

“But it’s so hot and sunny, ma!” Jihoon was _this_ close to actually hissing at the sky like a bothered kitten.

“If you don’t get out and get some sun, you’ll shrivel up and die early.”

His mom was always so straightforward, even towards a little kid like him. He didn’t believe what she’d just said, but he trudged towards the door anyway holding a baseball in one hand and a mitt worn on the other.

Jihoon craned his head up. The glare of the summer sun just barely grazing off the edge of his cap was enough to render him blind for a second. He blinked several times to get the colors and the shapes back in his vision.  He hadn’t been too far off from his house, yet it was as if he’d been walking on a parched desert for an hour. Why did the park have to be so far away?

While traveling under the shade of the trees, he figured that maybe his friends wouldn’t be there. Then his walk to the park would be for nothing. Who in their right mind would play in this heat? Not him. Jihoon had some spare change in his shorts pocket enough for an ice cream cone. If no one was in the park for him to play with, he could surely spend time by an ice cream stall instead.

As he thought, no one he knew was there. A bunch of older kids, his neighbors from the other side of their street, were playing football. But they were a clique-ish bunch. They’d never let Jihoon play with them. He tried to look for the concrete wall he could throw the ball on to make it bounce back to him. He did find it, but he found a man too, busy painting the structure.

No friends to play with and no place to play on. Sun hot and high and burning. There was a reason Jihoon preferred winter.

In his frustration, he threw his baseball on the pavement unwittingly. He muttered an ‘oh no!’ when he realized what he’d just done. The ball shot up to the sky and disappeared under the blinding rays of the sun. When he caught sight of it--a falling black dot in an endless expanse of whites and blues--he stretched his left arm upwards, ready to catch it in his mitt. He miscalculated the ball’s trajectory, and he had to run back quickly or else the ball would hit the ground and bounce back. The black dot became bigger and bigger until Jihoon could finally see the detailed red stitching on it. The ball was still too far off. He leaned back but lost his footing, and crashed into someone behind him, pulling him and the other person towards the pavement. With his quick reflexes, Jihoon positioned his left hand over his eyes before the ball would hit his face. The ball landed snugly in his mitt, but all at the cost of his back and whoever it was behind him.

Jihoon hastily stood up and reached out his bare hand to the other person.

“I’m sorry!” he said. “I didn’t see you there.”

The kid accepted Jihoon’s help and pulled himself up.

“It’s okay. I didn’t see you fast enough. If I did, I would’ve gotten out of your way.”

“Ah! You’re bleeding!” Jihoon gasped at the sight of the kid’s knee, slowly trickling with blood.

“Oh,” the kid uttered nonchalantly. “There’s a faucet somewhere over here used to clean shoes and feet. Can you help me get to that?”

“Sure, but aren’t you...scared? Of that?”

“This?” He pointed to the red gash on his knee and laughed. “Nope. I get into accidents like this all the time when I’m out here playing. That’s why my mom gave me this.” He swayed his hips, jiggling the fanny pack tied around it. “This is my first-aid kit. My mom taught me how to deal with my own injuries. So in case I’m alone, I can still take care of myself.”

“Wow.”

“Now, come on. Let’s go to that faucet.”

As the two went over to the faucet, Jihoon couldn’t help but glance at the kid’s wound. It wasn’t that bad, but it still freaked him out. He looked at the kid’s face to stop himself from doing a double-take at it.

“Hey, by the way, what’s your name?” asked the kid.

“I’m Lee Jihoon.”

“Cool. I’m Kang Euigeon.”

“ _Eu_ geon?”

“No. _Euigeon_.”

“ _Wi_ geon?”

Euigeon sighed. “Not you too.”

“I got it wrong the second time?”

“Everyone gets my name wrong,” he said. “Even my own dad.”

“That’s rough.” Jihoon pursed his lips. “But hey, at least your name’s pretty unusual. There are so many Jihoons in Korea. I bet I won’t be the only Jihoon you’ll meet and become friends with.”

Euigeon swiveled his head towards Jihoon. “We’re...friends? But we just met.”

“Well, you’re my friend now,” Jihoon declared. “Since all my actual friends aren’t here to play with me.”

At the faucets, Euigeon squatted while Jihoon turned on the tap. The water doused Euigeon’s knee and the torrent pouring to the drains turned from bright red to salmon pink to clear again. Jihoon guided him towards an empty set of bleachers so that they could tend to the wound. Euigeon took out a clean towelette from his fanny pack and patted his knee dry. Then with a cotton swab, he applied an antibacterial salve on it that reminded Jihoon of dark caramel. He finished it off with a piece of gauze and some bandage to dress it.

“Wow,” Jihoon uttered again. When he would get his scrapes cleaned and dressed, it took his mom a lot of effort into keeping him still. Euigeon didn’t as much as flinch, and he was doing everything by himself.

“So,” Euigeon started as he returned the first-aid items back into the pack, “since your friends aren’t here, why don’t _we_ play?”

“Can you play with a wound like that?”

“Yeah! I might be a little slower now so tag won’t be a good idea.” He noticed the mitt still on Jihoon’s left hand. “We could play catch.”

“Huh?” All of a sudden, the warmth of the leather mitt around his hand and the weight of the ball came back to his senses. “But I don’t have an extra mitt.”

“That’s okay. Let’s play catch without mitts!” suggested Euigeon.

Before Jihoon could retort, his new friend had already grabbed the baseball from his hand and hopped a few meters away from him. Jihoon slipped his mitt off and assumed a catching position.

“Ready? Heads up!”

Using an overhead throw, Euigeon launched the ball into the air towards his new playmate. His throw wasn’t very good, seeing as how the ball fell short and too far from where Jihoon stood.

“That was a weak throw,” Jihoon criticized.

“I’m sorry. I like playing ball but I’m just not that good at it. I love skateboarding more.”

“Whoa, you can skateboard?”

Euigeon chuckled and rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah. I’m not that good at it but I’m getting better. I can even do a trick now. Took me tons of practice though.”

So, that explains why he gets injured a lot.

“Oh, I forgot to ask you earlier.” Using an underhand throw this time, Jihoon threw the ball back at Euigeon. “How old are you? I keep thinking you’re a _hyung_.”

The ball plopped perfectly on Euigeon’s palm. “I’m nine. I was born on December ten, nineteen ninety-six.”

“I’m nine years old too! I’m a month older though. My birthday’s on November twenty-two.”

“That makes you the _hyung_ then!” the younger one laughed.

The boys continued playing and soon the sun began to set. The ice cream vendor was still selling by the playground so Jihoon and Euigeon ran (rather, Euigeon _limped_ ) to him before they went their separate ways. As Jihoon sank his teeth into the fish-shaped waffle cone of his ice cream, he hoped that he and his new friend could meet again the next day, or any other day for that matter, to play together. He was terrible at memorizing phone numbers, and he berated himself for not bringing along a pen and some paper. Euigeon didn’t memorize his own house’s phone number either.

“Let’s just meet here again tomorrow,” said Jihoon. “How about nine in the morning? So we can play a bit and then you can have lunch with us at our place.”

“Okay,” Euigeon replied after licking the strawberry cream off his ice lolly stick. “But I can’t make any promises.”

The second part of his answer didn’t land in Jihoon’s ears. He wanted to see him again too and play with him when his knee was all better, but he wasn’t too sure if circumstances would allow that any time soon.

* * *

 

“Wait, _you’re_ Euigeon?”

Minhyun had introduced Jihoon to Daniel while at the backstage of a music show one time. Since all three men were from the same city, it was only natural for them to get to know one another well. Jihoon, in particular, was sincerely surprised that Daniel grew up in the same neighborhood he did. And that he was the same kid we played with that one summer back in Busan.

“Why’d you change your name?” he asked his now much taller childhood playmate.

“Nobody could pronounce it correctly, remember?” Daniel replied. “Not even you.”

Jihoon shrank back in embarrassment.

“Good for you, I guess,” he said, though he felt as if he wasn’t genuine enough. He made up for the lack of sincerity in his voice with friendly pats on Daniel’s shoulder.

Daniel grinned. “You were right, though.”

“About what?”

“That’d I meet another Jihoon and be friends with him.”

As if on cue, Park Jihoon passed by them from behind and shyly bowed at Lee Jihoon before going to wherever he was headed to. It took a few seconds for Seventeen’s Woozi to register the fact that _he_ was the _sunbae_ in the room.

“I’m always right,” Jihoon smirked.

“So you are, Jihoonie,” Daniel agreed, patting his childhood friend’s back. “So you are.”

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Not totally related to this fic, but when will Jihoon ever be casted for It's Dangerous Beyond the Blanket? The man never leaves his bed. He's perfect for the show and he's already close with Daniel. Yeah. Just needed to let that out hehe.


End file.
